about

a corner, not a catalogue

Home Hack Corner looks at one room at a time and works out what is actually holding it together. Not a store, not a showroom — a person picking things, and saying out loud which ones did not make it.

where it started

Two friends, one side project, and too much time scrolling past patio furniture that looked better in photos than in real life. So we started picking the pieces worth a second look, and saying so when something wasn't. We care how things look in real homes, not studio shots. Still two friends. Still picking.

how a page gets built

Every page starts from one real photograph of one real room. The pieces in the frame get named, measured against the listing, and written up in the order they matter — the thing that sets the scale first, the thing that fills the last gap last.

Dimensions, materials and prices come from the listing. Where a specification is not known, it stays out rather than getting guessed at. A room described with invented measurements is worse than no page at all.

the near-miss

Every page names something that was considered and passed on, or a real drawback of something that was kept. The cushion cover that does not come off. The chair too deep for a short person. The light that turns a stucco wall the colour of a parking garage.

This is not a formatting quirk. A page that only shows wins is a page with nothing at stake, and it reads that way. The near-miss is the part that makes the rest of the page worth believing.

what this site earns

Some links are affiliate links, and a commission may be earned on a qualifying purchase at no extra cost to the buyer. That arrangement has never decided a pick — which is exactly why the near-misses stay in. The full terms are on the disclosure page.

elsewhere

The rooms also live on Pinterest, which is where most of them are found first. Anything else — corrections, a room worth looking at, a question about a pick — goes to the contact page.